


bring me the horizon (teach me how to say goodbye)

by solikerez



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, although not everyone is happy and people still died, but jyn and cassian survived!, let's just pretend everything is happy (spoilers it's not), rogue one fix-it fic, so there's that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 14:27:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9186293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solikerez/pseuds/solikerez
Summary: They wait for death to take them, as it has taken everyone else.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [getupandgo2011](https://archiveofourown.org/users/getupandgo2011/gifts).



> My first stab at rebelcaptain, I hope you like it! Feedback is appreciated, especially since I'm debating continuing this!
> 
> (also this is dedicated to getupandgo2011 bc she prompted this)

A storm, they think. A storm is coming.

They watch as death greets them with open arms. It manifests itself in the way that the horizon is swallowed up and the sun seems to disappear behind the destruction before them and the planet seems to hang in a strange sort of silence, suspended between planes of existence.

They watch and wait for death to take them as it rolls over the waters, like it has taken everyone else.

(She wonders how it will feel, to become stardust in body and in name. Will it feel like home?)

Jyn's face burrows into Cassian's coat, and she thinks for a moment that maybe this isn't the worst way to go, staring fate in the face beside someone who could have been something, _maybe_ , someday. But fate takes a left turn that day for the rebel and the captain, and instead it is a small transport that materializes from the white-hot haze and touches down right in front of them.

It's shock that locks their limbs in place, unable to lift themselves from the sand. She feels arms looped underneath hers as she is hauled up from the beach. She kicks out, struggling in the grip of a man dressed in green; she can't leave, doesn't want to leave anyone behind. K-2SO could be found and fixed, right? Baze, Chirrut, Bodhi, they could still be out there, they could be waiting for someone to find them, _they could_ -

The doors to the transport shut with a hydraulic hiss as it lifts from the planet's surface and Jyn sinks to the ground, all the fight nearly drained out of her. It's not until she hears the sound of shuffling feet that she looks up to meet Cassian's eyes, hardened but glazed over and his jaw set. He is holding back, she knows, as he always does.

Why isn't he _angry_? Why doesn't he want to shout and scream and fight because of what they have lost, what they left behind? Why does he always sit back and _accept_? Instead he settles down beside her and watches with her as the crust of Scarif ripples and crumbles before their eyes.

They know what it's like to watch a world burn.

They don't stay in that system for long. Cassian is up and at work as soon as they break atmosphere, hissing as he limps to the cockpit of the ship.

The man in green is hunched over the console of the ship, watching as readouts flicker across a small monitor. "We're receiving reports from the Tantive IV that they are being tailed by Darth Vader's ship. No further transmissions have been received."

Jyn grips the frame of the cockpit's hatch as she purses her lips into a thin line. The sacrifices of all of her friends can't be for nothing. She needs some sort of assurance. She needs something to hold onto: _hope_. "May the Force be with them. Do they have the plans?"

"They have the plans, but we need to get out of this system quick. The Empire's presence is too heavy here, we were lucky to even break atmosphere. Our flagship is down, so we're on our own."

Cassian is sliding into the copilot's chair before Jyn can so much as utter a word, flipping switches and pressing buttons as they blink red and glow green, and Jyn wonders how many times he's had to do this. How much has he left behind to survive?

"Get ready to make the jump," the man in green tells her, and Jyn holds onto the ship a little tighter as the hyperdrive whirrs to life. She watches as they leave behind the sight of the Death Star approaching, green blast precise in its destruction, in favor of streaks of blue light against a blacklit void.

She needs a break. Rest, she thinks. Rest is what she needs. She had been ready for it on Scarif, ready for her body to be overcome with the feeling of nothingness, ready to be gone from the world in which she had never sat still. Always on her toes, always fighting, never with anything to fight for, to die for, _until now_.

And so she had stared into the face of destruction- how poetic and how cruel to go this way, staring into the face of the product of her own father's creation and the very thing he fought so hard against- and let herself be at peace for once.

("Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn," Cassian had told her, and somehow in that moment, it was enough, to die here in his arms knowing that somewhere her father was smiling down- at _her_ , at his little piece of stardust- with that melancholy smile of his.)

But she hadn't been granted that mercy, hadn't been spared the pain of living on when others did not, and here, in the cockpit of an unfamiliar ship, fleeing through space to avoid the fate that had once passed her by, she breaks.

She remembers K-2SO and the immediate wariness he took to her, and remembers trying to convince herself that she didn't need the approval of a droid. Droids have no hearts or souls, everyone says, and yet she swears she could feel hers being chipped away with every blaster shot and raised voice she heard through the comms as he bought her a little extra time. She finds herself questioning now how droids could possibly be non-sentient when only hours ago, she listened as K2 gave up his life in exchange for a new hope. She knows that broken circuits and bolts should not make her knees weak like this, and yet she lowers herself to the ground, the will to stand knocked out of her.

She remembers seeing Saw again after years apart, more machine than man, and eyes wilder yet brighter than she had ever seen them. He told her to go on, to save the dream, and she had latched onto it, this cause he held close to his heart, and took it close to hers.

She remembers Bodhi and the way his eyes looked the way she felt as she and Cassian left them behind on Scarif: wide-eyed and terrified but utterly determined. Braver than he would ever know.

She remembers Chirrut and his blind faith in the Force. She remembers feeling drawn to him, comforted and disconcerted all at once as she stared into eyes that were unseeing, and yet saw her more deeply than anyone ever had before.

She remembers Baze and his critical, appraising eyes, remembers the warm thrum she felt in her chest when the expression behind those very same eyes shifted, into something warmer and familiar. She remembers the words "little sister" falling from his lips with such loyalty and sincerity that her breath had hitched, unnoticeable to everyone else, but she thinks about how maybe, in some other existence, they could have been a family. An odd, mismatched cross between lines, and yet everything she could ask for after all that had been taken from her over the years. It's a sad hope now, more a distant memory as she leaves the thought behind.

And she remembers Cassian in the copilot's seat, head trained forward as if looking back again will burn him. She remembers the way he watched her every step with bated breath when they first met, as if she could unravel everything he had worked for in life with a single slip of her fingers. She remembers how he seemed to appraise her after every skirmish, eyes lingering on each scar and scratch and bruise.

She remembers feeling anger and betrayal well up inside her when she learned what Cassian's true mission was on Eadu, and she remembers that anger bubbling up and spilling away as she threw herself over her father's body, unwilling to let go. She remembers Cassian's hands on her shoulders pulling her up then- hands that had nearly pulled the trigger on his blaster and broken her heart _but didn't_ \- She remembers him standing at her side when the council decided to do nothing and she had not. She remembers the way she cursed her heart for stuttering a step when he let those words slip from his lips: welcome home. She remembers holding his gaze when they passed each other the ship, _their_ ship. Rogue One, Bodhi had called it. She would carry that name with her.

She remembers watching him fall as the plans to the Death Star were clutched in her hands, thinking he was lost to fate as well.

But then he came back. He came back even when their mission was finished, and pulled her away from the man who had torn her family apart, who was responsible for so much suffering in the galaxy already, the man that _he killed_. And she let him. She let Cassian pull her away then, because their time was up, and the destruction had already begun just beyond the horizon, and this was all the time they had left.

It was time better spent searching his eyes in the dim light of the lift as it descended, noses nearly touching as they let shallow breaths fall from their lips. And in that moment there was just them, just Jyn and Cassian, the heaviness their hearts carried between them, and the desire to lighten the the load. So close, they had been  _so close_ -

She had wanted so much more then. She had wanted a second chance, and yet it seemed selfish to wish for it now, when they are the only two left.

Everyone else's chances had been spent, and burned away with the rest of Scarif.

She doesn't notice when Cassian crouches beside her; only when his hand brushes gently against her elbow to pull her up does she look up. There is restrained emotion swimming in those brown eyes of his, and she finds herself unable to look away. She stumbles forward when he pulls her tightly into his arms, and she fears letting go now, because letting go means moving on, and she is not sure she is ready.

Instead she buries her face into his jacket and bites her tongue to resist the sob that is hitched at the back of her throat.

"Where do we go from here?"

"On, Jyn. We move on." She hates that he is so used to this, to losing people and recuperating and staying strong. She once was too, in the years before, when she had learned to not get used to people sticking around. She'd lost old family and found it again, found a new family and lost it. She takes each loss to heart.

"How can we? Do you remember all that has happened, Captain? How can you not give this its due time, to take a minute and at least mourn or _something_? Cassian, we've lost so much."

There is iron in his stare. "They were rebels, Jyn. Fighters. Maybe they didn't expect to be, but it was a choice that each of them made. They knew the cost the moment they decided to follow you, as I did. War has no regard for our feelings. It will take and take, and we run off and lick our wounds. So forward, Jyn. We have no choice but to move forward, wherever it takes us."

They are quiet after that. Somehow, between their two fighting spirits, they find that the silence suits them.

The man in green- _Gaff_ , he says his name is- pulls the ship out of hyperspace an hour later, when Jyn and Cassian have found comfort in sitting with their backs to the durasteel wall, eyes trained forward as they fight sleep with fingertips barely touching.

They're tired, so immeasurably tired as the green of Yavin 4 pulls into view, and Gaff touches down under cover of the trees and right beside the great Massassi Temples. And as the hatch opens and the light floods in and the eyes of Mon Mothma stare sadly back at them from the docking strip, they hear a voice speak up from behind them, Gaff's voice.

"Rogue One. Welcome home."


End file.
